Paul Cézanne: 12 works

'In 1907, the year after Cézanne's death, this portion of the painting was detached from the wall, transferred to canvas, and sold.'

'Vigorously and freely painted in a dark and limited palette, his work has more in common with the old masters than with impressionism. The Phillips Collection's painting was the first self-portrait by Cézanne to enter an American museum.'

'With this careful composition, Cézanne suggests that the painting is both a mirror of nature and something which stands apart; as he put it, "It is understood that the artist places himself in front of nature; he copies it while interpreting it."'

'Cézanne's father purchased a large mansion called Jas de Bouffan on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence in 1859.'

'Even in these rough sketches, it seems that Cézanne placed less emphasis on his subject than he did on the composition of color.'

'The planes and volumes are distributed in space, with no concern for conventional perspective: the lengthening of the left arm and the elimination of the chair's right-hand armrest both attest to Cézanne's lack of concern for the standard construction of depth. Among the portraits of Madame Cézanne, this one occupies an intermediate place between the domestic portrait and the rather elaborate effigies.'

'Cézanne represents one of the workers from the fields and vineyards of his family home the Jas de Bouffan, a large estate close to Aix-en-Provence. The peasant stands with a calm, meditative expression, and his monumental form suggests the timeless, traditional values that Cézanne associated with Provençal peasants.'

'His interest was not in the objects themselves but in using them to experiment with shape, color, and lighting. He arranged his still lifes so that everything locked together.'

'Probably executed about 1895, the painting records the shift in Cézanne's art, twenty years after he had begun to move away from Impressionism. He wished to "treat nature through cylinders, spheres and cones" and has approached this portrait like a still life.'

'Instead of reflecting nature accurately, Cézanne intended to arouse in the viewer an impression of mass and depth.'

'This canvas is one of a set of plein-air paintings produced by Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence towards the end of his life. In it, Cézanne's gardener, Vallier, poses against the balustrade on the terrace of the artist's new studio, close to Les Lauves.'

'This is the largest, the last, and in many ways, the most ambitious work from Cézanne's lifelong exploration of the time-honored theme of nudes in a landscape.'